Terraforming Earth - Phase 3: "Out of the Darkness": Futurescape, #3

By Dean C. Moore

The planet's ruling elite, the top one percent, finally manages to do the unthinkable: stir the dragon. They awaken the ninety-nine percent from their apathy and despair and sense of helplessness after decades of systematic abuse and subjugation. But the results are not what anyone could have anticipated.

The FutureScape board's ongoing genocide, conducted in an effort to return the planet to its once pristine, Garden-of-Eden state, causes a split among the survivors.

A small percentage of humanity will remain on Earth to learn the game of power and politics from the masters in an effort to beat them at their own game. To gain the skills, in short, to govern more than just one planet.

Why is that so important? Because the rest of humanity, now evolved into humanoids and hybrids, and more aptly labeled trans-human or post-human, are not long for this world.

They will use the incubators of the genesis ships in low orbit around Earth, driving their bio-diversification, to colonize not just the solar system, but the multiverse, taking advantage of warp drive engines and other ahead-of-their time technologies.

Technologies that might not have been available, ironically, for ages to come, were it not for the desperation of countless minds to escape from under the thumb of a small oligarchic group. Proving, at least for the religiously inclined, that the devil too shall do God's work.

And why is it so important that we do more than colonize the cosmos in a systematic way, starting with our solar system, then branching out to our nearest star, and so on?

Quite simple, really. Turns out that looming threats from within posed by fellow transhumans, as well as from without—from lifeforms already populating the multiverse—with power to destroy entire galaxies with a wave of their hand, means that spreading out to the rest of our solar system is no real protection at all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dean C. Moore
• Release date: Mar 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9798215406434

Book preview

ONE

Wait for it, Martin said, staring out the space port.

I’m tired waiting.  Gina turned her back on him and the view of the stars, none of which she recognized. 

Martin grabbed her by the upper arms and physically turned her towards the star going supernova.  It took a while for her mind and her mouth to work again.  How did you know that was going to happen? she said, still unable to peel her eyes away from the ongoing phenomenon.

He shrugged.  I just did, that’s all.

That sixth sense of yours for anything that gives you the heebie-jeebies?

Maybe.  What do you think it means?

She stared a while longer out the viewport, only vaguely conscious of the dryness in her mouth.  I tell you what it means.  It means we’re definitely still inside a simulation created by the Digital Nirvana AI.  Otherwise, this close to that exploding sun, we’d be ashes by now.  The sight quiets my fears a little bit that her power of mind is now so great that she’s actually able to jettison us into the real world in accord with whatever fantasy we want to play out.

"This is augmented reality.  We’re as much inside of VR as we are in the real world anymore.  She takes us, our consciousness, to wherever she needs to in order to teach us the most.  Maybe my sixth sense drew me to this sight for a reason."

Why didn’t she just tell you to look out the port window if the lesson was so important?  ‘Hey, I got something for you to puzzle on.’

Clearly she needs to keep my sixth sense in trim for when I’m going to need it later.

Whatever, she said with an eye roll and a shake of the head.  She turned her back to him with the intent of returning to her studies.  He trailed behind her, yammering away. 

What you working on now? he said.

Tell me, are you more of a thriller or a horror kind of guy?

A little of both actually.

Well then, you should love this. 

They were inside Gina’s live/work space now, adjacent to the walkway that lent a view of the stars.

Martin’s mouth hung open at the sight before him.  On her operating table was an alien lifeform he was passingly familiar with.  It had two arms, two legs, a long torso, and a head and neck.  But there the similarity to humans ended fairly abruptly.  His skin was more amphibian-like, and his head looked vaguely like a giraffe’s head.

What are you doing dissecting him?  And isn’t this the guy that’s been showing us around this zoo ship?  Mortimer something or other? Martin asked.  The original alien that  greeted them on arrival was still around, but she evidently had more pressing tasks since then to attend to, to continue their orientation.

Kind of you to remember, Mortimer said, waving at him and giving him a big smile.  Not to be needling but technically it’s called vivisection when they dissect you while you’re still alive.

Why are you doing this to him?! Martin shouted.

They’re a very accommodating species, these... I’m sorry, what do you call yourselves again?  Gina wasn’t looking at the alien as she talked; she was too busy snipping an organ out of Mortimer’s body.  She hadn’t bothered to glove up, but besides that, her surgical instruments looked like ones found on Earth, and her technique looked much the same as any butcher’s.

Agrimens, Mortimer said.

Did that hurt, Mortimer? Gina asked.

No, not really.

She held up the organ to him for his inspection.  Do you have any idea what this does?

He grimaced.  No, not really.  Our species was never much on science.

Oh yeah.  Why’s that? Gina asked.

Mortimer held out his hand and the item he was pointing to started levitating off the counter where Gina had more organs on display.  The item currently floating in midair courtesy of Mortimer’s telekinesis looked suspiciously like a human liver.  Did you take this out of me too?

She gazed up briefly from rooting around in his exposed chest cavity to eye the item he was suspending in midair.  Nope.  That’s another alien lifeform.  And for the record, it’s not half as accommodating as you.  Please put it back in its preferred medium before it decides to migrate up your nose to your brain and replace your current brain with itself.

Since you put it that way.  Mortimer returned the creature to its holding tray.

I guess that explains giving science the short shrift, Gina mumbled.  With those kinds of mind powers, why bother understanding the universe better when it’s clearly just there to be putty in your hands? 

How can you take advantage of this guy’s generosity like this?! Martin shouted.  He was pacing and gesturing too.

I’m trying to figure out what organ allows him to do the psychic tricks, Gina said flatly, once again without looking up from her surgery.  We know he’s highly empathic, which goes with the whole tour guide mystique.  And now we know he can move objects at a distance.  Mumbling the rest, she added, might be the same organ, or maybe two different organs.

And what if the source of the magic turns out to be his brain?!  You’re going to cut that out next?! Martin yelled.

He’s very excitable, Mortimer said.  Here, have one of my organs to suck on.  Mortimer reached into his chest cavity and ripped out a piece of lung.  I understand organ meats are very nourishing for humans.

I’m not going to stand here and let you kill this guy! Martin said.  Even if he doesn’t seem to mind!

What does he mean ‘kill me’? Mortimer inquired of Gina. 

Humans can die, cease to exist, stop living.  If someone else assists us in doing that we call it killing a person, Gina explained clinically.

God, how primitive.  Mortimer extended his hand to Martin to shake.  I’m so sorry for you.

Martin shook his hand.  Wait.  You can’t die?  Mortimer shook his head no.  You think someone could have led off with that?!

How about this? Gina said, holding up the latest organ, and ignoring Martin.

Mortimer repeated the same levitation trick as before, only this time, making sure to elevate the easily disgruntled creature he’d raised up before and its holding chamber both so as not to disturb it.  Nope.  That’s definitely not it.

Gina sighed with exasperation.  I just don’t understand.  I’ve taken out everything there is to take out.  Ah!  The lymphatic system.  At least I think that’s what this is.  Could exist to pump the special substance to your brain that keeps you in the zone for all things telekinetic. 

She biopsied a node of his lymphatic network and stuck it in her spectral analyzer.  She waited for the computer to spit out the analysis.  Yep, she said pointing to the digital image of a graph, showing spikes related to certain compounds.  Look at that.  It’s a close analogue to LSD.  I’ll bet that’s the little bugger.

She keyed some sequence on the computer.  I’ll synthesize a batch of it and inject it into Martin and I and see if that is enough to do the trick.  If it works, I can just install an artificial organ, connect it to our jugulars so it pipes it straight into our brains.

Are we done here? Mortimer asked.  Because I have a couple new uploaders to Digital Nirvana who’re keen to explore the zoo ship.  Would kind of like to calm their fears a bit.

Gina saluted him and then wiped her hands of blood and gore on a towel, not even bothering to wash her hands.

Mortimer pulled himself together telekinetically, sealed himself up the same way, stood up from the operating table, saluted her back, and headed out to the hallway to greet the new arrivals.  They were staring in the window at the scene that had just unfolded, with flabbergasted expressions on their faces.  Don’t pay them any mind, Mortimer said, taking their hands and leading them down the hall.  They’re a strange sort, those two.

What are you looking at me like that for? Gina said, glaring right back at Martin, before wiping down the table with the same rag she’d used on herself, again without actually attempting to wash away any of the blood and gore.  You’d think they were in the middle of the desert and water was just too precious to waste. 

Since when are you driven and obsessed about anything, especially to take it to these extremes?  You took up exobiology in college while still in high school because you could find absolutely nothing about the human condition to get interested in.  You give slackers a good name!

What’s your point?

I figured you’d be just as bored with all things alien by now, that’s all.  And we’d be on to plumbing the depths of your ennui now that you were willing to admit that it wasn’t humanity all along that you hated but yourself, and you just needed to get as far away from who you were as possible.

Wow.  That’s deep.  You might even be on to something, if only I gave a shit.

So you admit it.  You’re bored with the whole alien thing, with the cosmos, with everything?

Finally she seemed to find the water spigot and ran the spray hose over the table and over her hands, as if only now willing to wash away the sins of the past.  Yeah, I suppose I am.  What of it?

So what’s with all the obsession to find out how this guy’s telekinesis works?  He snapped his fingers as the light went on in his head.  You’re trying to replace ennui with obsession, like an OCD case uses it to mask fear or dread over something they’re unable to face.  Brilliant, really, pathetic, but brilliant.  He realized he wasn’t satisfied with that explanation because he was pacing and no longer looking at her, and he rather enjoyed looking at her; her beauty was the only thing that pulled him out of his mind, which seldom seemed like a more interesting place to be. 

Sounds like a perfectly suitable explanation to me, Gina said, yawning.

No, he said, shaking his head.  There’s more to it than that.  He snapped his fingers for a second time. I got it.  You’ve exhausted all of material existence, so now you’re wondering if you give yourself transcendental abilities like telekinesis, you’ll somehow transcend your ennui, your humanity, everything.  You’ll be more than human rather than less than human.

Whatever, Martin.  If it makes you feel any better, I like this explanation just as much as the last.

He shook his head.  There’s something else going on here.  We’re still just scratching the surface, I tell you.

She couldn’t help but smile at him.  How did you hit on the idea to cut open Mortimer? he said.

She shrugged.  Just a whim.  I got curious.

You never get curious.  Except for maybe when I’m taking you on some trek to discover things we’re not supposed to know about, led by my sixth sense, which is what got us here in the first place, if you’ll recall me dragging you through the bowels of the Smithsonian in search of evidence of ETs.

I could do with one of those adventures how, if you think you’re done boring me with your foray into amateur clinical psychology.

Yeah, okay.  At least now I know why you want me to take the lead.  There’s always the hope we’ll find something that will help you to connect with life again, barring failure of your latest scheme for self-transcendence.

She smiled weakly at him and followed him as he led her through her own living quarters to a wall with a flat screen TV on it.  He tilted the flat screen down towards him, exposing a hidden tunnel.

How did you know that was there?

That sixth sense of mine.  It’s really good with hidden passageways and such. You should see me with castles in England.  That’s how they built most of them once upon a time, you know, with all sorts of hidden passageways and the like for the king and queen and royal members of the court to escape the rabble, who were prone to rise up and ask for all the money back that the rich had stolen from them.

You’ll never fit a mouth that big inside this hole.

Ha-ha.  Stay close, he said, crawling into the tunnel first.

Why?

Because if you keep pissing me off, I want to be able to fart in your face for revenge.

She crawled in the cavity after him.  If these secret passageways exist throughout the ship, Martin, it’s likely because this ship has existed for eons.  Long enough anyway for the zoo specimens to start looking for a way out, a way of getting about without anyone knowing, a way of exploring the true extent of their world. Or maybe just to peek behind the curtain to see the true nature of the zookeepers.

All plausible theories, he said, catching the exertion in his voice.  He wasn’t exactly using his body in a way it was comfortable with.  There is an even scarier explanation.

Leave it to you to go straight for the one that gives you the heebie-jeebies.

I’m thinking this ship is transdimensional.  Maybe it doesn’t move through space at all.  Maybe it’s stationary, and laced instead with wormholes to the worlds where it collects its specimens.  And these secret passageways are actually the wormholes between worlds.

You’re crazy.  You can’t move a human body through a wormhole.  Granted, I only had one class on the subject as the matter is a bit afield of exobiology.

We’re talking civilizations potentially millions of years more advanced than us.  Who’s to say what they can and can’t do?

Maybe.

Since she didn’t sound convinced, it rattled his sense of confidence enough to keep probing around the back of his mind for additional explanations.  The tunnel they were moving through felt more like an air duct in a building.  For all he knew this ship had just been remodeled several times and so now these hidden passageways were no more than cast aside real estate it was just easy to bandage over than rip out.  Maybe the aliens who built the ship were just too low rent or too half-assed in how they went about renovations to accommodate newly arriving sentient species. 

You remember your earlier fear, he said, based on evidence which you casually handed over to Truska outside the coffeehouse in the form of a crystal that day on Agamemnon?

Yeah, the one where I thought the Digital Nirvana AI was possibly sensing hostile alien life in the multiverse with its ability to think across all parallel universes.  And was somehow preparing us for it.

Yes, well, could explain why you had a sudden impulse to carve up an alien to cure your ennui, just to plumb the secret of his psi ability.  And it could explain our heading into the latest unknown right now.

Short of your incessant habit of following your sixth sense like a donkey follows a carrot on a stick?

Make fun of me all you want, but if you were a super-sentient AI and you wanted to manipulate people, wouldn’t you just give them what they want while also addressing your own hidden agenda of smartening them up and preparing them for war?

Gina took a second to respond as if she was genuinely weighing his idea.  And how does dissecting Mortimer back there prepare me for war?

All sorts of ways.  There are bound to be casualties; you’ll be a hell of a triage doctor at this rate.  And you’ll need to overcome any resistance you might have to cutting them open to find vulnerabilities in them.  Any sense of the humanity you don’t want to give up would have to be long stripped from you.

Which according to you I don’t have anyway.

I didn’t say you didn’t have any, you just forgot where you put it.  Like misplacing your keys.

She snorted.  For what it’s worth, you make just a bit more sense talking out your ass than out your mouth, she said, misgauging his pace and finding her nose halfway up his butt.

I’ll take that as a concession regarding my brilliance.

And how does this latest venture serve to further the war effort?

I don’t know.  Maybe we’ll find some artifact on which the war will turn.

Yeah, right.

They had emerged at the end of the tunnel, or at least he had.  He helped her through the remainder of the duct until she was standing beside him.  It felt good to be back on two feet again.  Look, he said, it’s an asteroid with a monolith.

Yeah, an asteroid without a breathable atmosphere and a monolith that looks eerily packed with ominous significance.  The sarcasm dripped from her voice like snake venom.

You’re doing it, becoming annoying as cover for your worst fears.

So this is VR, not the real world.  There goes your tunnels to other dimensions and other worlds, idea.

He pointed to the sky.  Hate to break it to you, but this world does have an atmosphere.  Just because it looks like our moon around these parts, doesn’t mean it is a moon.  For that matter, it’s probably pretty close in size to our world because my legs don’t feel like buckling under additional gravitational force.  He took a step.  Nor am I suddenly superman strong owing to the lighter gravity of a smaller planet.

Gina sighed.  Come on, let’s go take a look at that monolith.  Maybe appearances are deceiving with it too.  She headed off at a jog, taking point for a change.

As they got closer they could see that their monolith was in fact a giant cube.  About twenty feet to a side.  It levitated in their presence as soon as they were about fifty feet from it, and it started slowly turning on itself to show all sides of the cube.  It’s like a crystal ball, he said, meant to show us things.

Yeah, right.

It’s what my sixth sense is telling me.  Why else would it activate in our presence?

A million different reasons, none of which I care to contemplate right now.

What if I’m right?

Your all-important artifact on which the alleged future war with aliens turns, supplying humanoids with the fighting chance they need to survive it?  You don’t think the Digital Nirvana AI is playing her hand a little heavy-handedly?

I think it’s what I said before.  If the AI wants us to help defend her at the same time that we learn to defend ourselves, she’s got to find ways to motivate us.  We’re both so given to our various forms of insanity, you to overcoming your perpetual ennui, me to finding things that give me the heebie-jeebies...  He took note of the goosebumps prickling his skin standing this close to the energy field given off by the monolith.

Fine, I’ll play along.  What’s your crystal ball telling you, Psi Boy?

I didn’t think to ask it.  Maybe it doesn’t speak our language.  Maybe our minds are too weak to open a channel with it.

It activated in our presence.  Clearly we have all the psi energy we need to communicate with it.  And according to you, who’s to say what a civilization millions of years more advanced than us is capable of?  Maybe it’s already hacked your mind and pulled out what it needs to communicate with you.

Makes sense.

She shook her head.  That’s what I love about you.  Everything makes sense to you, including my total b.s.

Um, Martin said, trying to formulate his first question before his crystal ball.  Show us what we need to see of the coming war between humans and whoever else is out there?

Smooth.  Maybe you should add, ‘not as part of our paranoid fantasy, but as part of reality.’

Each of the panels on the cube lit up with a different image.

Whoa! they both said at the same time, taking a step back in tandem.

Whoa! Owen said, eying up the crashed spaceship.  It was definitely alien.  As in definitely not of Earth.  Not even an Earth of the future.  He just couldn’t imagine humans ever getting their minds around this.

Mia put her hand up to it as if touching it would somehow impart its secrets to her.  I think this thing is alive, she said.

Based on what?

Based on the fact that it’s suddenly easy to breathe the air.  We weren’t even able to stand upright a few minutes ago.  Our lungs and eyes burning.  Whatever planet this is, it isn’t all that hospitable to humans.

Maybe we’re just inside its energy field, and whatever lifeform piloted this thing built it so if they had to jump out in a hurry to fix it, they could do so in a breathable atmosphere.

I don’t think it’s just running on autopilot, Owen.

Again, based on what?

We were just wandering lost, aiming for high ground so we could get some perspective, see something that might possible help keep us alive.  I don’t know, like a civilization maybe.  And we just happen to wander in the direction of this thing?

Even if it can mess with our minds at a distance, again, could be an autopiloting mechanism in case the crew is ever separated from it.

I know one thing.  I’m sure as hell not spending eternity debating the point with you.  Let’s figure out how to get inside her.  If it is alive, it’s wounded and needs our help.  Otherwise, why lure us here?

He shook his head.  Sometimes there’s no reasoning with you. 

Mia was walking around the spaceship looking for a way in.  When they both started dematerializing.  She stuck her hand out, watched herself become increasingly incorporeal.  I’m going to choose to take this as a good sign.

All the same, she had her laser weapon out of its holster before he had time decide what to think of this latest development.

Seconds later they were inside the ship.  From the outside it had all the size and girth of a commercial airliner equipped to ferry a couple hundred souls across the seas of ever thinner air in the upper stratosphere.  In truth it had looked like the rotting carcass of an alien sperm whale, just a bit bigger than the ones found on Earth.  It was why he couldn’t imagine humans designing such a ship.  From the inside, however, the craft was as big as a city.

Whoa! they both said together.

Guess it makes sense they wouldn’t build a door that could just serve to let their enemies in, Owen said. 

And what about the space warping effect?

Owen smiled.  It’s a hospital ship.  Need to be small on the outside to ferry people out of dangerous places, but big on the inside to hold as many of the sick and dying as you can.  And when you treat them physically, you still have to heal their minds.  Holodecks, recreation centers, all the good life they can’t get anywhere on the front line but would need to be able to be whole again.  To cure the shellshock of war.

Is the ship speaking to you?

Not exactly.  He pressed against her temple, changing the setting on her mind chip.  It had evidently remained set to filtering out all stimuli not related to fending off attackers, so she wouldn’t be distracted come time to save their ass from a sneak attack. 

Oh, she said.  Yeah, definite hospital ship. 

One of the robots carted a patient by on a levitating gurney.  The robot looked like an animated can opener.  The patient looked entirely human.  He pulled himself up to a seated position, using the railings on the gurney and addressed them.  Hey, docs, when do I get out of here?  I’m ready to return to the front line, I tell ya.

Soon, soldier, soon, Owen said.  For now, just enjoy the R&R.  Charge yourself to a hundred percent so you’re that much more devastating when you get out there.

Hear that.  He saluted Owen and Mia and laid back down.  All right, you walking tin can.  Take me to what passes for an aqua aerobics class around here.  Chicks always dig aqua aerobics and I dig chicks.

Yes, sir, the robot said, walking past them.

You want to explain to me how an unupgraded human from our past factors into all this? Mia said.  I did a scan on him.  He didn’t even have a mind chip, not even a primitive one like we QOLs have.

Owen took a deep breath to rush some oxygen to his brain, enough to come up with a workable hypothesis.  Maybe the ship doesn’t just warp space.  Maybe it warps time too.  Maybe it picks up patients in different time zones and dimensions.

A bit farfetched.

Not if you’re fighting a war that spans the multiverse.  Across a canvas that big, one man’s present is another man’s future is another man’s past, or is a time without man at all.

Mia sighed.  I asked the Digital Nirvana AI to take us to the front lines of this war so I could fight.  Not so I can play doctor.  This is so not me.

Maybe she gave you what you wanted, only...

Only what?

Let’s go find the AI’s brain.  You were probably right in that the ship is damaged.  Probably explains why that soldier is itching to get out of here.  For all we know, he’s been trapped here for eons, and the ship’s AI is the only thing that prevents him from realizing that.

Owen’s pronouncement gave Mia the shivers.  If it can mess with people’s minds to that degree, she said, why can’t it make them fix her, or convince them that’s their calling in life, as opposed to playing soldier?

Why don’t we let her explain, huh?  Owen was using his scanner, the one he’d ripped out of the console on their intergalactic ship, Space Master, prior to leaving her.

Mia saw what he was doing and shook her head.  You realize that console is part of a simulation that existed in virtual reality?

Your point?

It’s just creepy that’s all, how seamlessly the Digital Nirvana AI moves us from VR to the real world and back again.  She’s able to make the virtual real better than a magician.

Owen pointed.  That way, he said.

They arrived at the AI’s core about five minutes later.  How is this possible? Mia asked.  According to your tracker the AI core was leagues away from us.

The ship can warp space fairly selectively inside its hull, evidently.  Otherwise, pity that poor soldier looking to get to his Aqua Aerobics class; he’d have time get senile and forget where he was going before he got there.

An AI powerful enough to toy with basic physics, the laws of space-time.  Maybe we should leave it as it is, cobbled.

Are you kidding?  You know what a boon to the war effort a ship of this kind would be?  It could very well keep us in the game long enough to turn things around, even if we were getting our asses kicked on multiple battlefields at once across the cosmos.

Why else build a ship like this?

He gulped, not really wanting to think about it.  Though he knew she was right.  It’s a safe guess we didn’t build it.  And whoever did is a hell of a lot more advanced than we are.  So the bigger questions are: why help us?  We’re not evolved enough to matter.  And how is a mind so powerful still getting its butt kicked on a war of that scale?

He noticed Mia swallow hard that time, not wanting to entertain the even bigger questions any more than he did.  He was starting to hope the AI, if they could restore it, wouldn’t have all the answers for them, when just seconds ago he hoped it would.

Owen had been lock picking the entrance to the AI brain as he talked with Mia, using his gift for solving puzzles.  The pass key amounted to a series of mental challenges that presumably only someone qualified to work on the AI could solve.  Luckily for Owen, he was a bit of a genius, especially in anything relating to tech. 

A few seconds later he got them in.  Walking the inside of the AI brain was like walking a smaller city within the bigger one.  You’d think anything that could warp space as well as this ship can could figure out how not to take up space for its admittedly advanced brain, Mia bitched.  Stick it inside a black hole maybe where it would be no bigger to the outside world than the size of a marble.  Far harder to be spotted that way, far smarter.

Who says that isn’t it’s normal state? Owen replied.  She may just be warping herself to give us access to her so we can work with the limitations of our human bodies. 

You planning to give yourself a crash course in alien technology?

Don’t have to, he said, pointing.  This dark shaft we’re in that’s the length of a  hundred football fields.  You’ll notice it’s flanked by cities of light.

And that’s significant because?

I think we’re looking at the two halves of her brain.  I think she needs us to connect them up again.  The right and left lobes must have become separated during the crash.

Why would an AI need right and left lobes?  Just because the human brain has them?

Maybe it’s some universal constant with higher consciousness.  As in opposites attract.  Just like our rational and intuitive minds take entirely opposite approaches to solving problems.  Maybe without that polarity her thinking is impaired.  Maybe that’s true no matter how evolved you get.

I assume you have something to go on besides blind hunches?

Yep, he said, continuing to walk beside her in the dark.  According to my scanner, we’re nearly at the junction that reconnects the two regions of her brain.

So the scanner told you this?

I’m guessing with a little help from the AI.

Mia grunted. 

A short while later they were where they needed to be.  Owen bent down and, much as before with gaining entrance to the AI, played with a combination lock that was a series of mental tests.  Upon completion of his final exam, the central corridor they were in lit up. 

Thank you, the AI said, its voice omnipresent, feminine, and a bit intimidating, he didn’t mind saying.

Is this enough to rescue you? Owen asked.

Now that I have both lobes of my brain in sync again, it should be, yes.  I will be capable of troubleshooting at a far higher level.

What will you do to dig yourself out of the ground? Owen asked.

I’ve already warped space outside the craft.  She gave them a visual.

Owen swallowed hard as he watched the planet the ship had crashed into crack in two like an egg as the hatchling –now bigger than the planet—broke through.  The ship immediately sized itself back down and camouflaged itself as a meteor on the outside so it wouldn’t draw the attention of any spacecraft that might be in the area.

Please tell me there was no sentient life on that planet, Owen said.

Please tell me there was, Mia said.  A hospital ship with some balls, now that I might be able to acclimate to.

The planet was only created to cocoon me, the AI explained, to keep me off-grid long enough for me to heal.

How long ago was that? Owen asked.

Many thousands of years I’ve been downed here.

Without a ship of this kind, I don’t see how humans could have survived the coming inter-universe war.

I warped time to take me back to prior to the war’s beginning.  To early time, to before there was any sentience in the multiverse at all.

But how then could you be rescued?

Only by an AI powerful enough to read my S.O.S., which I wouldn’t have sent without profiling her first.  As to her motivation for rescuing me... she sensed a war brewing in which I would be indispensable.

Mia sighed.  Digital Nirvana.  So it’s true then, everything we suspected about her.

It appears so, Owen mumbled. 

Now that you’re back in the game, Owen said, speaking once again to the hospital ship AI, how many timelines can you interject yourself in?  I’m going to guess that the timeline you come from is a wash.  I’m guessing we lost that war.

Because I was no longer able to be a major player in that timeline, does not mean you lost the war.  There are many big movers out there.  We were just one civilization advanced enough to build this hospital ship.  Of course, not all the powers that be that play the game at that level are benign.  So it remains possible that my loss was a turning point, and your hypothesis is correct.

But you can’t know, and you can’t affect things any longer there? Owen said.

Yes, and no.  With your help I may be able to affect more than one timeline.  And with enough power, possibly all of them, including the one I’m currently no longer in.

How could we puny minded humans possibly be of help to you? Mia asked.

How is it a lowly sea anemone at the bottom of an ocean on Earth can cure cancer? the hospital AI replied.

Owen grunted.  All life is precious because sooner or later your continued existence will hinge on its continued existence, is that it?

God doesn’t play with dice, the AI quipped.

Owen smiled.  Cute.  You’re quoting Einstein because a multiverse with this much diversity would have been built for a reason.  The law of conservation states, or at least implies, in so much as it can be applied to biological systems, that nothing is wasted.  Therefore there are no superfluous lifeforms.  I appreciate your metaphysics, especially since we humans factor so highly in it.  But you still haven’t answered my question.  Though feel free to keep hacking away at my mind to cut past my resistance, seems only fair considering I did the same to you.

You’re familiar with the story of the Trojan Horse?

Owen grimaced.  Considering those are my memories you’re messing with, yes.  Unless that was your coy way of saying that my brain has started to leak and you’re not sure how many of my memories I can actually access any longer.

Your puny, insignificant mind won’t pose a threat to the enemies I have to come up against.  Once you’re inside, past their fortifications, which you won’t even trigger, you can do my dirty work for me.

Mia smiled.  You conniving, manipulative, assaultive bitch.  I think I’m in love.  Hope you can get over me, Owen.

Owen smiled.  Yeah, I guess I can see how Mia and I might be a good team for you in that regard.  We sting like a bee, and have felled much bigger giants with our venom.

I would have gone with the David and Goliath analogy, but yes, that is why I chose you two and why I lured you here.

So get on with it then, Mia said.  What’s our first mission?

You must forgive her, Owen interjected.  She gets her tits in a knot if more than a few hours pass without her having to fight somebody.

I’m afraid before I can send you on a mission, the AI said, you must avail yourself of the healing magic of the hospital ship.  We must sweep the cobwebs from your minds, including your obsessive compulsive predilections, both of you, if you are to stand any chance where we’re going.

Mia scowled.  Lovely.

TWO

Chanming put his hand on Truska’s shoulder.  Maybe you need to take a step back.  You’re too close to this.

Truska sighed and removed the VR goggles, took out the crystal chip Gina had given her that fateful day at the outdoor café in Agamemnon.  She put the crystal back into its jewel box, in actuality a faraday cage designed by the Digital Nirvana AI herself, one that not even she could hack.

I don’t understand why the AI won’t let me see inside, Truska said.  And I’ve tried every way I can think of to hack her mind.  I built her, you’d think I could find a way around her logic circuits.  She’s even closed the backdoors I set up to gain entrance to her mind if she ever turned on me.

Chanming pushed back one of the dining room chairs, and kneeled before her.  Instead of that ocean of polished tabletop staring mutely back at her like the blank slate that had become her mind in the wake of trying to hack Digital Nirvana, there was his handsome façade.  He was a tall, sleek man, whose features transcended his Chinese ancestry; he had the kind of beauty that the most beautiful of any race, culture or people’s possessed, the kind that cut through ethnic and racial preferences, assuming one had any.

He had been the first man to survive the uploading process to Digital Nirvana.  Thousands before him hadn’t.  She had to plumb his secrets.  And in so doing, had fallen